


open wide for the sun

by rory_the_dragon



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:20:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28884516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rory_the_dragon/pseuds/rory_the_dragon
Summary: In the middle of the Foreign Office, surrounded by supposedly important brass and situations that needed to be solved for the good of this strangely significant little country, Thaniel Steepleton was deciding, or had already decided, about the exact way he’d fuck Keita open with such certainty that Keita could feel it as surely as if Thaniel were behind him right now.
Relationships: Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	open wide for the sun

The great city of London grew hot in the most miserable way. It came along in shunts and starts, groaning its way into the heat of summer, and then collapsed into a reluctant but oppressive warmth that always reminded Keita of the unpleasant stickiness one felt after having ran a bath too hot. You could never get dry after a bath like that, only move around the droplets of heat until they became your own, and in much the same way did London settle into inescapable mugginess every summer.

The nearby factories did little to help it, in fact the smoke that churned from their chimneys had the unfortunate habit of mixing so that the beads of sweat on Keita’s upper lip tasted less of salt than of ash whenever he was too late to dab away the excess with a handkerchief, and the closeness of the buildings on Filigree Street did their best to trap the heat inside. Keita had opened all the windows he could manage, along with the back door, and even the screeching cries of those horrid little Haverley blighters couldn’t convince him to close them again.

It was worse, he reasoned, though reasoning did little to mollify him, because he could remember tomorrow’s heat as well as today’s. And the day after. And the day after that. He could feel every single day between here and the promise of London’s crisp, untouchable, autumn like layer upon layer of heat until his head was swimming.

He stirred at his tea, steam rising in gentle swirls, and tried to bring himself to take a sip. It would help, he knew, to regulate his temperature somewhat, but for once the thought of drinking tea made him feel almost faint. When he felt the dizziness rise, he pushed the teacup away, and it thankfully faded again.

Today, Six would come home talking about lemonade that she’d tried on her walk home with Osei, shade sought in a teashop that had added the iced drink to the menu in the heat, and she would quickly convince Thaniel to take them all out for an early evening walk as the sun dropped behind the city to show them a drink they’d both had before but that she never had. Keita would agree, for no other reason than because she wanted to, and because the last few rays of sun would burn the tops of Thaniel’s cheeks in a fleeting flush of pink, barely felt and gone again by morning, but so very lovely.

Bright sparks of bitterness bled across Keita’s tongue and he closed his eyes at the rush of moisture he felt in response. 

“It would help,” Thaniel had said before leaving this morning, with the wry acceptance of someone with English blood in their veins. He was built for this country, had grown up in its omnipresent dampness and knew nothing else. Keita had never disliked him more, and even the humid curl of his hair at the nape of his neck couldn’t bring Keita to forgive him. “If you allowed yourself to remove your jacket once in a while. Everyone does it at the office.”

He’d said it with a shrug, as if Keita didn’t know that at night Thaniel ran as hot as he did, burning up all the air a foot away from Keita, even with the covers pushed down around their hips to try and cool down and the window open. They were too hot to touch, for any damning noises to make their way out into London, but Thaniel’s careful eyes always returned to the window until he fell asleep. It would have been easier to sleep in their separate rooms, but on the nights Thaniel planned to do so Keita knew they’d sleep just as terribly anyway and found reasons to keep their conversation going until Thaniel was toeing off his shoes and stripping off his long-ago unbuttoned shirt in Keita’s room. Thaniel had to know what he was doing, but he allowed it all the same.

Keita had pursed his lips. He was dressed in his usual suit, shirt and tie, complete down to the waistcoat and sleeve garters, not a hair out of place, and if Thaniel thought he was willing to yield to the heat that easily then he knew a different Keita Mori. “I cannot speak to the standards of the British Government,” he’d said, a tad snippily, and ignored the twitch of Thaniel’s lips as he packed his briefcase to leave. “But _I_ run a respectable business.”

“Oh _yes_ ,” Thaniel agreed, calling for Six that she’d be late for him to walk her to school if she didn’t hurry. They had expected her to hate the heat with the same passion that Keita did, and while Keita was glad that Six seemed to be so relieved not to be trapped in the workhouse in the summer that she hadn’t even noticed it, it would have been easier for him to put aside his discomfort if it had been to aid her. “By the way Katsu ran off with Sir Walter’s compass this morning so you’d best catch that before he arrives to collect.”

Smirking slightly, the man Keita loved past the point of absolute destruction dipped close enough to try and press a kiss to his temple. “If you touch me, I will cut off your hands,” Keita said, entirely serious, and Thaniel threw back his head and laughed but dutifully held up his hands in surrender as Six came flying down the stairs. He skirted, pantomimesque, around Keita to the door, and then both of them were gone before Keita could tell him to keep some of the sugar cubes from his new assistant today when she offered them with his tea. The lemonade would be sharp without them.

The house was quiet once they’d left, the way it always was without them even with the ever-present ticking that came from the shop, and even though their absence also took away some of the body heat that had settled into a room with three people in it, Keita stood for a moment to feel their loss and to remember their return tonight.

Then, one of the Haverley boys threw a ball through his open backdoor, and he went to distract himself by shouting at them.

It wasn’t his best work. In the small space between their houses, there wasn’t even a lick of breeze, and Keita slumped after five minutes of scolding. He threw their ball far enough that they’d have to climb into the neighbour’s garden on their other side to retrieve it, which would keep them occupied first for the twenty minutes it took them to figure out how to climb the tree to get over the fencing and then for another forty as they realised they couldn’t get back quite so easily, and went back inside to look for Katsu.

He found him, eventually, curled under Thaniel’s made and slightly dusty bed. This room was the shadiest in the house, Keita now realised, by dint of being North-facing, and almost could be considered cool if he stood very still, but then he heard the fast whirring of gears and ducked to find Katsu, aforementioned compass clutched weakly in one tentacle, and appearing for all the world as if he was expiring in the heat and had gone to seek shade. 

Thaniel insisted that Katsu had a mind of his own and, while Keita knew it came down to a series of gears and pulleys and chance that made Katsu act as he did, it felt completely untrue in moments like these.

He slipped the compass out from Katsu’s grip, the octopus not putting up any fight at losing his prize so long as Keita allowed him to remain in the coolness of the dusty - really, did Thaniel not clean in here? He didn’t spend _every_ night in Keita’s room, did he? - space beneath the bed. Keita promised to find, or to create, some sort of cool space for Katsu to recline in, as it wouldn’t do for the heat to adversely affect the springs and gears Keita had worked so hard on, and Katsu’s whirring sounded almost happy as Keita crawled out from under the bed. He dusted himself off, then went to wash his hands, but even the water from the tap felt tepid and unsatisfying.

His bad mood increased another increment.

The morning went by like slow, dragging syrup. Keita had several commissions he was working on; a few pocket watches as were always in rotation, a restoration of a Duchess’ carriage clock that was inlaid with the kind of expensive pearl that warmed to his touch, and a small device that Thaniel’s Foreign Office superiors had sent home with him one evening for him to hand over for Keita’s inspection, being the most accomplished and, more importantly, readily available watchmakers that they had on hand. Thaniel had asked if he knew what it did, and Keita had said that he knew what happened if someone found the small and exact key that was hidden in the base of the thing. Thaniel had asked him if it was dangerous, and Keita had said that it could be in the wrong hands. Then Thaniel had asked what he had done with the key, and Keita had told him that he had broken it off inside the lock. Then Thaniel had asked him if he wanted to come to bed, and Keita had forgotten what could happen with the box and its key and was in the midst of writing a report based solely on his best guess.

He worked sporadically in the heat, tinkering between one project and the next. The carriage clock was easily fixed, and he wrote out a small note in the exact morse dialect he knew specifically from Thaniel and planned to take it to the post office. On the way there he would run into a client from last year whose watch was still running perfectly, thank you very much Mr Mori, but the devil appeared to have gotten into the old grandfather in their hall and would Mr Mori be available to come and look at the thing any time soon? Keita would agree and in exchange for a relatively simple fix - it was over-wound, these clocks always were - he would be gifted both a small box of Parisian caramels that Six would turn her small nose up at and Thaniel would love, as well as the invention of the radio being brought forward two years and eight months.

He chanced a look outside, saw the blaze of the sun hitting the glass of his windows, one of his cabinets, then shining off the reflective surface of one of the watch faces, and changed his mind.

The duchess, the grandfather clock, and the damned radio could all wait until London bloody cooled down a bit.

He took a moment to recover from that particular paroxysm, setting down his tools that had become warm and clammy under his hand, then sighed in relief as the shop door opened (it was the only door he hadn’t opened in the building as it wasn’t terribly professional to leave one’s door open for anyone to walk in, except on nights when the love of one’s life needed sheltering after a bombing) and the barest of breezes followed Sir Walter in, due more to the man’s movement than any real allowances from the weather. Still, it gave Keita a sudden and certain amount of affection for the man, and he presented Sir Walter with the watch with a smile and a laugh which was the most agreeable he’d felt all day. 

He was just turning back to his work, Sir Walter away and pleased pleased with his new toy, Keira’s card tucked into his wallet where it would be remembered helpfully at a party in four months time when one of Walter’s friends would mention the need for a new music box for his daughter, and was half considering whether he was now in the frame of body and mind for tea to have a more fortifying effect on him, when he felt a blazing warmth against his spine before his elbows gave out from a soon-to-be remembered surprise and sturdy presence behind him. The breath left him in a rush, surprise chasing a sudden heat that was now curling in his belly, as he felt the whisper of a firm, broad hand at his neck and, very clearly, _Thaniel_.

Fire rushed into his face as, in quick succession, he felt a mouth at his throat, glass against his cheek, and a solid, familiar thigh pushed between his legs. Then it was gone, and he felt his breath catch again to find himself bent over his desk, pushed up onto his toes, even, a shaking weakness in his limbs as if he’d just run a mile, or- 

Somewhere across London, Thaniel had made a very quick, here and gone again, decision. It was a passing fancy, most likely, an idle fantasy of what would happen if he came home to have his way with Keita, gone again when Thaniel caught himself. Somewhere across London, Thaniel hadn’t been able to help himself thinking of Keita spread out across the desk and a small, helplessly pleased and ever so slightly smug smile crossed Keira’s face as he straightened, feet a little unsteady as his heels touched back down neatly.

He wondered what had caused it, then marvelled at the wondering, at the not-knowing. 

He was just brushing the new creases out of his waistcoat, still turning the moment over in his hands before the changing of Thaniel’s mind took the full force of the physical memory from him, when Thaniel’s hand, wide and sure and desperately hot slipped beneath his shirt, tugging it from his waistband and lifting the material to grab almost roughly at the curve of Keita’s ribs. A gasp escaped Keita’s lips as he felt bruises blossom, just for a moment, and the sound was swallowed by a hot mouth that disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Keita fell back to his heels, having been pulled up by Thaniel’s intended grip, and fought to steady his breathing. His chest was rising and falling quickly, from surprise and the jackhammer of his heart that always beat like a mad thing when Thaniel was close by, but he got enough control of himself to head straight to the shop's front door. He swung the sign to read _Closed_ , twisted the key for good measure, and was about to leave the shopfront for pure and simple decency’s sake when he felt the hard slam of the door against his shoulder blades and an ache in his thighs, as if he’d been unceremoniously lifted by them, by a man much larger than he was. Dimly, he had the fleeting thought that he had never been more thankful for the pane of glass that read his name and profession in gilt being quite thickly frosted before that was gone in a haze of _oh, yes._

Since he’d begun boxing with more regularity, Thaniel had started to broaden into the shape that Keita had sometimes had to stop himself from expecting when he turned around. His hands, which always gripped at Thaniel’s biceps when he was above him, now stretched around hard muscle the way they were meant to. Keita had loved Thaniel since the possibility of his existence appeared on the horizon of Keita’s life. He would have loved him had they met when Thaniel was still a child who didn’t know what to do with the strange man with the funny name, loved him if they’d met while Thaniel worked in the factory and couldn’t help but resent the rich Japanese businessman he wouldn’t accept a penny from, loved him if they’d met after a different decision as civil servants on opposite sides of the home office desk, and he’d loved him when he’d stumbled, bleeding and suspicious and covered in ash, into Keita’s shop with all the subtlety of, well, a clockbomb. But the Thaniel he became more and more of each day, Keita’s Thaniel, made Keita’s spine turn to honey.

Keita’s Thaniel was big and he was so _clever_ and now, Keita’s hands ached as if he’d had them dug into the firm flesh of Thaniel’s arms for hours. Or, what felt like hours when Thaniel got his head down and put his mind to the utterly brilliant task of moving between Keita’s thighs, because Thaniel was not a brute but he could be bloody single-minded at times. His course of action was decided so definitively when they went to bed together that Keita could feel every stroke overlaid with the rest until he lit up like filament. That’s what Thaniel had told him once, or maybe would tell him soon, right now Keita couldn’t tell which. The sounds he made, though quiet and muffled by the meat of Thaniel’s neck or the crushing softness of the pillow, Thaniel could see every one like the brightest spark. 

Thaniel could stand, Keita thought as the rolling closeness of body heat disappeared once again to the day’s oppressive warmth, leaving Keita a strange mix of too cold and too hot all at once, to be a little less clever.

A little less smug, too, he thought as he felt a swift kiss press to the temple he’d denied Thaniel access to this morning, followed by a brief breath of laughter that tickled his ear. He bent his head instinctively up to it, then caught himself and scowled.

Thaniel had left a tie in Keita’s bedroom recently, and once it had been unwound from Keita’s wrists and the bar of the headboards, Keita had washed, pressed, and kept it in the room for the express purpose of Thaniel finding it again and realising that Keita had kept it. He would have noticed in a few days and though it would still have been too hot, Thaniel’s eyes would have darkened and flitted only habitually to the window, too intent on stepping closer to Keita, who would have drawn him upstairs to the cool bath he’d run earlier that evening. He’d already booked an appointment with a contractor to assess the water damage that would occur in the wooden floorboards as a result.

It was a fit of absolute undignified pettiness that had Keita heading calmly upstairs, on tenterhooks for the next round of Thaniel’s, by now obviously tactical, decision making, to collect the tie, march across the small gap of corridor that separated their rooms, and place the tie quite noticeably on the other man’s chest of drawers. He folded it, businesslike and neat. This was not the suggestive drape of material he’d never truly admit to having laid it in previously. This was a message, quiet but pointed. Between this and Keita’s resolution to definitively not acknowledge this morning’s events, Thaniel might think again before deciding to play games without being around to make good on his word.

He barely made it two steps before his legs gave out. 

His knees felt liquid, the sudden jolt of what felt like a sharp nudge against his foot kicking his legs apart, and he grabbed at the door frame to keep himself upright even as he felt the phantom pull of hands at his hips, holding him up. As he gasped, there was a pressure on his tongue that he instantly recognised. They had slick, kept in the the side table Thaniel had dragged in to keep by his side of the bed when the small pile of books, glasses, and his pocket watch became the kind of untidy that made Keita’s mouth turn down, and it was used liberally due to Thaniel’s endearingly earnest refusal to fuck Keita without thoroughly ensuring he was ready for him. But Thaniel loved to watch Keita’s mouth around his fingers, and even on the nights where Keita was too tender to take Thaniel inside or they were too tired or simply too caught up in the movement between them to adjust position, Thaniel wouldn’t be able to help himself from pushing his thumb to Keita’s lower lip and Keita, already expecting it, would open his mouth.

He opened his mouth now. Half instinct, half plea with a Thaniel who wasn’t even here, and what came out was something that could most accurately be called a moan, as he felt the wicked-hot heat of Thaniel pushing slowly inside of him. 

Keita bowed his head. 

In the middle of the Foreign Office, surrounded by supposedly important brass and situations that needed to be solved for the good of this strangely significant little country, Thaniel Steepleton was deciding, or had already decided, about the exact way he’d fuck Keita open with such certainty that Keita could feel it as surely as if Thaniel were behind him right now.

There was a bruise blooming, he could feel, at the base of his neck, just over the top knob of his spine, where Thaniel would set his mouth. At his hips, he could feel the strong grip of Thaniel’s hands. There was an after-ache inside of him intersecting so perfectly with the illusion of fullness that he felt alight with it.

There would be a kiss, in the after, sure and sweet and soft, and Keita felt it full upon his mouth.

It took him a full minute of sensations pitching through him, wading through the memories to try and assign them their proper place and time, before he realised that they weren’t going anywhere. Every one of Thaniel’s decisions so far, these fleeting but fierce futures, had blazed quickly then faded slowly, physical sensations of the memories lingering as if Thaniel had been taking his sweet time changing his mind, rocking back and forth between decisions. Now, and it was rapidly becoming _now_ , it felt as if Thaniel’s course was set, his decision made, which meant-

The bell above the shop door downstairs rang.

Keita closed his eyes.

On shaky legs, he made his way downstairs. He kept himself upright, thankful for his complexion hiding the worst of his flush, and took a moment to straighten his jacket, fix his collar, push his hair from where it had fallen into his eyes and use the once-crisp, now creased corners of his handkerchief to dab at his temples

Thaniel was in the kitchen, briefcase set aside and hands in his pockets as he watched Keita descend the stairs with dark and clever eyes. There was humour glinting there, to be sure, but most of it was heat. Heat that Keita felt coiling in his belly, prickling along his skin, racing up his spine as Thaniel captured his gaze easily. He had already removed his jacket, long ago while still in the office, and his shirt sleeves were pushed back over the definition of his forearms. There was a pinkness to his cheeks, he’d walked home rather than caught a cab, as always, and there were a few freckles peeking out across the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t have looked more alluring than if he’d stripped to his drawers.

“You’re back early.” Keita thought it was an admirable attempt at sounding composed, the heat of the afternoon responsible for the barest shake in his voice and nothing more. From the quirk to Thaniel’s mouth he didn’t agree. 

“Fanshaw gave us the afternoon off, due to the heat.” Thaniel said, stepping closer with the slow pace of one who had prey in his sights and was confident in his abilities to keep it. Then he shrugged. “Couldn’t decide if I was going to take it or not, there’s a lot of work to get done at the office, you know?” Even with Keita still on the bottom step, when Thaniel stopped in front of him he had to tilt his head back to keep him and the pleased smirk playing about his mouth in his sights.

“You _bastard_.” Were it not for the windows thrown wide open, the door pinned back, and the bright light of the day streaming in to light them up for the world and the Haverley’s hellish children to see, Keita would have pulled Thaniel in by his loosened tie and damn the consequence of them toppling to the floor, if only wipe the grin from his face. Keita Mori had disarmed governments, he had moved mountains, he’d killed and lied and maneuvered his way around the geopolitical landscape until there were men and cities who heard his name and trembled. And by this one man, he was utterly undone. 

There was a divot in Thaniel’s upper lip as he smiled, unrepentant, that Keita would have razed oceans for. “I missed you too,” he said, a tease that rang genuine as he lifted a large hand to cup Keita’s jaw. Keita’s eyes had already half-lidded, feeling the expectation of the graze, of Thaniel’s touch, before he opened them again sharply when Thaniel’s hand hovered less than a centimetre away from him. Even without his memory of the near-touch, Keita could feel the warmth of his hand like crackling fire. “Can I touch you now, Kei?”

It would be unfortunate, really, when Keita had to murder the man he’d engineered his whole life, and countless others, to meet. 

“You can come upstairs-” Thaniel’s eyelashes fluttered, the weight of his body leaning instinctively forward as Keita stepped back, his voice low. “-and fuck me until I forgive you for this.” And he at least had the satisfaction of hearing Thaniel’s breath catch at the profanity. 

All the words Keita knew in English he had learned, or would learn, from Thaniel. That, along with all of Keita’s inherent cultural bias - really, the English were so stiff about some things - meant that watching the tips of Thaniel’s ears flush red at vulgarity would be ridiculous if it weren’t so enticing. Thaniel could sit in his office chair at work and decide long and hard about bending Keita over the desk to have his way with him, all the while knowing exactly the effect it would have, but saying the words he just couldn’t manage.

He had no problem following Keita up the stairs, inches away and Keita could already feel his hands, soon to be pulling the rumpled end of Keita’s shirt from his waistband, lifting the material off and over his head and-

And at the top of the stairs, Keita hesitated. Although Thaniel had had the courtesy to cut this game short, he had come home in the height of the afternoon. There was no question of postponing this for a cooler hour, Keita was too far gone and Thaniel wasn’t too far behind if the hurried, eager rushing of his footsteps up the wooden stairs was any indication, but 

For a split second, Keita Mori had no idea what to do.

“Mori, what is it?” A split second of uncertainty was all Thaniel needed to pull up quickly, teasing falling away, and the hand he rested on Keita’s hip meant only as an assurance of _I’m here_ that Keita had never known to want before. In the back of his mind, Keita was dimly aware of it, inherently in awe of the fact that Thaniel Steepleton thought him worthy of a gentle touch, but for now he frowned.

“Your room is colder than mine,” he said, a note of accusation in his voice he couldn’t help. He felt off-kilter, already from Thaniel’s best efforts and now from the decision before him that was, due to its complete newness, stumbling him. Thaniel’s room had been bathed in shade all day. Keita’s had the tube of slick.

Behind him, Thaniel laughed in a puff of hot air that tickled the back of Keita’s neck as he leaned down, hand tightening on his hip with intent once again that had Keita hissing through his teeth. “I wouldn’t know.” 

It was true. He didn’t sleep in his room often enough to compare.

His lips dragged at Keita’s neck in a trailing line of wet heat, a memory and reminder all at once of the nights he hadn’t and wouldn’t spend in his own bed, and the possibility of Keita making any decision except those his body made for him disappeared once again as he turned in Thaniel’s arms to catch his mouth. 

Even in the heat, relief flooded through Keita like a soothing balm as Thaniel caught him, easily, one hand clutching at the small of Keita’s back, the other finding the hinge of his jaw with a firm thumb as he opened Keita’s mouth under his and found his way inside. Everything that was possible went away, pulling back along Keita’s skin until only the here and now, Thaniel’s hands, his mouth, the solid press of him bearing down on Keita as he walked them back towards Keita’s room, remained.

The course was set and they turned to it like a ship to a compass.

Keita’s fingers, long ago turned desperate, worked blindly at the delicate buttons of Thaniel’s shirt. He managed two before Thaniel’s hands came up and pushed his away. Then he turned to the task, not of finishing what Keita had started, but of steadily stripping the layers from Keita. He unbuttoned Keita’s jacket without fanfare, discarding the thick material somewhere out of sight without even taking the chance to gloat about how he had been right, how Keita should have taken the thing off hours ago. Now, Keita would agree with him. He wouldn’t when Thaniel next brought it up. The waistcoat was next and this time Thaniel did draw back to raise an amused eyebrow at him as he slid his hands up the front lining and pushed it back over Keita’s shoulders. There was a moment where the arms caught at the crook of Keita’s elbows, holding him in place, and for a vivid, crashing second, Thaniel decided to leave him there, half-bound and half-mad, as he worked the rest of Keita’s clothing away, before he tugged the garment down and off.

Keita shivered at the fading memory of wet heat, the clutch of Thaniel’s curls in his hand, and felt his legs tremble and give.

He fell to the mattress and Thaniel didn’t break stride, moving with the new position to drop to bended knee. With something akin to reverence, as if he were down on the stone floors of a temple, surrounded by the curling smoke of incense and candlelight, Thaniel gently unlaced Keita’s boots, sliding them from his feet and pressing a kiss to the jut of his ankle. First the left, then the right. His fingers, hot and firm, skimmed up the inside of Keita’s trouser leg, and Keita’s head fell back as Thaniel’s grip tightened. The possibility of bruises bloomed, hot and sensitive to the touch, before Thaniel simply used his leverage to tip Keita further back onto the bed. Sheets that Keita hadn’t intended to crumple grew so under their weight as Thaniel rose up to untie the knots at Keita’s cuffs.

Then, Thaniel’s hands came up to loosen the pin-neat tie that was still tight at Keita’s throat, mouthing at the skin he found there. Keita gave over to it until he felt the thick friction of the tie being drawn out from under his collar and his eyes flashed open again. “How-“ 

Thaniel stole the word from him in a slick slide of tongue. The solid weight of him was making Keita’s head spin. It was overwhelming, all encompassing, and Thaniel was plainly setting himself to the business of removing the remaining articles of Keita’s clothing without leaving so much as an inch between them. Keita had to summon everything in him to get the words out as Thaniel tossed aside Keita’s shirt and braces, the barest ripple of air from the movement before Thaniel covered him again with the heat of his body giving him the moment to ask, “How could you- _possibly_ have known _ah_ -about the -tie?” 

Everything else, Keita understood, or just about. A series of decisions made with the full intention of carrying them out, before abrupting changing course. Maybe he’d used a coin to decide, though that felt a little random for Thaniel, who was, mostly, thorough and steadfast and sensible. Keita would have to ask him, later, and in the sheets Thaniel would laugh and press a sweet kiss to his cheek and either tell him that it was simple, every day he wanted to come home to him, or he would smile with a wry “I need to make sure you stay interested,” that would ache in Keita’s chest with possibility and he’d kiss Thaniel’s knuckles the way worshippers kiss golden idols. Either way, he would keep his secrets a little while longer, and Keita would let him.

The tie, however, there was no way Thaniel could have planned for that.

“Oh, it was a tie?” Thaniel’s grin was wicked. “I know you,. I knew you’d try and gain an upper hand, make your-“ He moved his hand, down, a firm and decisive press against where Keita was hard beyond measure that had him gasping and Thaniel smirking as he let the next word, “ _Displeasure,”_ roll off his tongue. “Known when I came home. I just decided that when I found whatever it was-“

There was a swooping feeling in Keita’s chest as he reached up to claim Thaniel’s mouth, not needing to hear the rest. He’d already felt Thaniel’s decision with searing intensity. Learning the reasoning behind it, the glimpse into Thaniel’s truly sharp mind and the fact that he’d applied it for the simple reason of surprising Keita, was shattering. “You’re a menace,” he breathed when he drew back, meaning something else altogether.

They didn’t speak much whenever they went to bed together. Some of that came from Thaniel’s British reticence, some of it was the close press of their walls to the other houses in the row. Keita would only leave Filigree Street if the shop burnt down around him - something he’d already taken several sideways steps to avoid here and there, just in case - but moments like these he longed for a house in the countryside populated by well paid and discrete staff and massive empty wings that would echo without anyone hearing a sound. 

But he would hear what Thaniel wanted to say without speaking anyway, and even when the immediacy of the memory faded, he would remember the way he had felt at knowing it, even if only for the briefest time. 

“I love you,” he heard back in Thaniel’s voice, roughened like stone in his throat, before Thaniel decided not to say it. Instead he bent his head to kiss Keita, slower now, pointed and intense, and in between the quiet trade of mouths and sighs they finished the work of undressing each other. 

When Thaniel’s first finger, thick and slick and grounding even as the future echoes of movement all fell upon Keita’s frazzled nerves like sparks, breached him Keita broke his mouth from Thaniel’s to watch him, gaze unblinking and endless, their breath mingling together in hot pants.

Even with all of Keita’s knowledge, every time between them felt new once again. His body reacted to Thaniel’s as if it were meeting him for the first time. 

He couldn’t count how many times they’d done this by now. They’d been at it too long now and would, happily, as the way things stood, be at it for many years to go. Keita didn’t know every time they would fuck with the same lightning hot intensity as he’d experienced today. Indeed, there had been a time where he was never sure if they’d take this step together. There was an equal amount of futures where they’d remained as steadfast, perfect friends, the sensations of Thaniel fucking him like ghosts on a whisper of a breeze, potential possibilites made small and insignificant by the countless others. Once, Keita would never have mourned if they had not, having never truly known the sensation of Thaniel filling him up and taking him so entirely as if he could make it a pure and simple fact of the universe; the sky was blue, the grass was green, Keita Mori was his. 

As they’d become ever closer, as certain chips had fallen where they may, this future had become dazzlingly clear for a shining moment, before being swiftly, painfully, broken away. Keita had felt gutted with it in a way he’d never anticipated before. It was as if the universe had given him a clear and fatal sign that he had ignored. Before, they could have been anything. After that, it was this, it was _everything_ , or it was nothing. 

He breathed Thaniel’s name as Thaniel bottomed out, hand reaching up to cup the soft and irreplaceable back of Thaniel’s head, fingers threading through his damp curls. 

Thaniel looked up. His face was a riot of sunburn and pleasure. “Keita,” he murmured, before dipping his head to kiss him again, and it was everything. Keita had it.

When the shadows came down sometimes, hanging heavy over every choice and decision Keita made and remade and made again, he tried not to allow himself doubt. He made his choices, same as everyone else, and so did Thaniel. Situations could be altered, routes changed, conversations never had and roads never taken, but Thaniel had a choice at each and every one of them. Keita made sure of it, even if Thaniel didn’t realise he was making it. But on those nights, when his diaries left him feeling cold and impossibly vast, he couldn’t quite stop himself.

On days like these, however, with Thaniel’s hips moving in a steady, rising rhythm, Keita’s back damp in the sheets as he rode out against the unbearable heat, the slick slide of his calves around Thaniel’s thighs, the hand Thaniel finally wrapped around Keita’s cock to stroke him in hot, unceasing strips, it felt impossible.

How could he possibly have engineered this when Thaniel stripped him from his moorings so thoroughly? Keita would set the world alight for him. He would make it snow in July. He would, maybe, in a blue moon, offer him brown tea with milk on the side. Keita would give this beautiful, brilliant man anything in the world he asked for and Thaniel had nothing to ask but this.

“Stop thinking,” Thaniel said, or nearly said, or was once about to say. Keita couldn’t tell which but then it was irrelevant. The tightness in his belly knotted, his hands clamped at the base of Thaniel’s neck and the sheet by his head, his mouth opened on a cut-off groan as his release swept over him a full second before it actually hit, and all thoughts rushed from Keita’s head.

It wasn’t quite a blankness. Keita still had enough of himself to reach down and take Thaniel in hand from where he’d slipped free from Keita’s body, not bothering for finesse or rhythm as he brought him off, but for the moment he felt and knew only each second as it passed. His mind was lazy, sated, and it would have been disconcerting to not truly anticipate the way that Thaniel would gasp and kiss him as he came, hot in Keita’s hand and across his belly, were it not for the fact that he knew Thaniel to the bones and had already tipped his head to kiss him back.

“Clever boy,” Keita murmured, damningly, into Thaniel’s mouth and tasted the huff of his laughter.

“That sounds an awful lot like forgiveness, Kei,” Thaniel noted, rolling off to sprawl beside Keita for a long moment as they caught their breath back. Keita did not deign to give a response. Each breath they took was warm, the already sun-soaked room now filled up with the heat of enthusiastic lovemaking. He could feel the heat rolling off of Thaniel, mere inches away, then felt its lack as Thaniel disappeared off to collect cool, damp cloths to clean themselves, but mostly Keita, down with.

He stopped to open the bedroom window before departing and the first fingers of a breeze made their way across the room. It was as if a cork had finally been popped from a fizzing up bottle; Keita could feel something other than the oppressive heat of London. He closed his eyes and sighed. If the Haverleys wondered why a bedroom window was cast open so wide in the middle of the afternoon, they could go to hell for all Keita was concerned.

By the time Thaniel returned, Keita had pushed up onto his elbows, but all that really meant was that Thaniel had room to climb behind Keita on the bed and pull him tight to his chest, not caring for heat or sweat, as he first set the wet coolness to Keita’s forehead before setting himself to the mess of his stomach.

It was too hot to remain in bed for long, but Keita didn’t move. Once they moved, he would have to find fresh clothing that would soon warm to the afternoon’s heat again, he would have to put his hair to rights and splash water on his face to take away some of the redness, and he would have to stop touching Thaniel. Like this, stripped to nakedness and the barest touch of thin sheets, they could lay for a while with their legs tangled together, their hands caught up in one, voices hushed not in response to the open window - the noises of London’s mid-afternoon would have been enough to drown out almost anything, truthfully - but because this was the volume of lovers, especially illicit ones who had stolen this time from the daylight.

“You planned this.”

Thaniel moved so that Keita could see his raised eyebrow. “If I had planned this, you would have known about it,” he pointed out, which Keita had to admit was true. 

“Then how-” But he cut himself off. Asking how, he knew, was not the path to take. He should ask why, why Thaniel had spent the day thinking so circuitously and back to front, completely at odds with the temperament of the man Keita loved, for the explicit purpose of getting Keita into bed, which was hardly a task that required as much effort as Thaniel had put in today. 

He didn’t ask. In truth, he knew why.

“Six will be back soon,” he said instead, voice tinged with regret at having to leave the small oasis Thaniel had created for them. “We should dress.”

Thaniel sighed, but pressed a final kiss to Keita’s shoulder before moving. “If you try to put on a waistcoat, I’m throwing it out the window.”

“Mr Steepleton, you would certainly be within your rights to _try_.” None of Keita’s clothes from today were at all salvageable. He crossed to the drawers to pull out laundered linen, still heatless from the dark, and Thaniel pressed a kiss to the crown of his head as he passed him by, like a small bookend before sliding open the bedroom door and letting the world back in.

“God but you’re a bastard, Mori,” he laughed, and Keita focused on dressing himself neat enough that Six wouldn’t notice anything out of place rather than watching the play of Thaniel’s muscles beneath the skin of his shoulders as he dressed across the way of their tiny hallway. “Don’t cook tonight. When Six gets back we’ll walk down to the docks, have chips. It’ll be cooler by the sea.”

It would be loud and filthy and a pickpocket would try to make off with Thaniel’s pocket watch, though Thaniel would notice at the critical moment and give the young cad a firm talking to that was much more intimidating with his new build. But Keita could now taste salt on his tongue along with the faint taste of lemons that hadn’t dissipated since this morning, and Thaniel would smell like the sea air when they went to bed tonight. 

“We’ll have to walk her way,” Keita advised, which was as good an agreement as any and Thaniel knew it. “She has her own plans for this evening.”

“She always does,” Thaniel said indulgently, a father’s voice, one that ached at Keita whenever he heard it. It was not a bad ache, but it was a persistent one. It would soothe when he held Six’s hot little hand in his as they walked the docks, when he caught sight of the way Thaniel watched them both, sun glinting off the suddenly noticeable shine of his tie.

Keita turned, just as Thaniel appeared in the doorway, wearing a pleased smile that just about bordered on _too-pleased_ along with the tie Keita had folded up in a fit of savage pleasure earlier. It was knotted neatly, and obviously, and Keita lifted his eyes from the material, feeling heat flood back through his cheeks once again. The sun was slowly beginning its descent behind them, a suitable excuse for a while longer at least.

“You’re not wearing a waistcoat,” Thaniel pointed out, as if that were at all the matter up for discussion here.

“And you are more trouble than you’re worth,” Keita lied without repentance, as the sounds of Six arriving downstairs made themselves known. She would be up here soon, much too caught up in her newly discovered treat to even think it anything out of the ordinary that Thaniel was home early, that they were both up in the rooms rather in the kitchen waiting for her, but it would be best to head downstairs to find her just in case. 

Before they left, Thaniel one foot on the stairs already when Six began calling for her father, Keita caught his hand. Solid and strong beneath his fingertips, he closed them around Thaniel’s in a loose grip for a second. He’d let go and Thaniel would linger to press a fleeting kiss to his mouth, soft, sweet, but first he said, “Thank you,” and meant more than Thaniel could know.

Or maybe he did. The kiss he gave Keita wasn’t fleeting, but as if every word Thaniel wasn’t saying, wasn’t even planning to say for some reason or another so even Keita didn’t know, could be passed through the steady, wonderful, slide of their mouths. “For you, Kei, anything,” he said, or maybe nearly said, and disappeared.

  
  



End file.
